Meh CBA

[Angel Barracks]

Have you ever just gotten so fed up with a project that you jacked it in?

I used to play 6mm ‘Napoleonics’ but the amount of figures I needed to achieve my ultimate goal just eventually put me off.
I sat down and worked out that at a 100 figures a week it would take a few years or something, of painting, so I sighed, cried and gave up.
In fact it put me off the period so much I sold off all my historical stock and started making my own range of 6mm sci-fi.

Anything ever demoralised you so much you just gave up and did something else?

[Alvin Molethrottler]

Like you AB, Napoleonics was my bugbear, I’ve started collections in three different scales and dumped all of them because of the precise issue you highlighted concerning just how much effort is required to produce an army. I am a dreadfully slow painter which is why I tend to stick to WW2 and Modern in 6mm, because even I can paint stuff green in a reasonable amount of time 😉

[Mike Harrop]

I’ve also abandoned a naps project in both 28mm and 15mm, I also chucked in my 28mm & 20mm WW2 bits to concentrate on 6mm which is coming along nicely for once. It seems like I give up on most things not 6mm nowadays, though my 28mm spy-fi and cult TV is steadily growing.

Mike

"This lighthouse is under attack, and by morning we may all be dead!" The 4th Doctor - Horror of Fang Rock

[Thaddeus Blanchette]

Why are Napoleonics such a problem, especially in microscales? I am a slow painter and I have huge armies in 2mm (enough to do Leipzig), 3mm and now I ammworking on 6mm.

3mm is a godsend for the lazy Napoleonics player. But even in 6mm and working slow, I knocked off a couple of regiments this weekend.

Just how big was your project, AB? I am doing 32 figure infantry battalions and plan, ultimately, on corps-sized armies.

We get slapped around, but we have a good time!

[Angel Barracks]

ah well you see, I was doing 1 figure = 1 man.
Now, clearly Waterloo would be impossible like that so I was just going to do Hougoumont.
But even that was a massive pain.
I got about 2500 done before I gave up.

I spent a year making and painting my Hougoumont though, LINK

[Thaddeus Blanchette]

Ahn. Well, there’s your problem, then. Even so, my new 6mm project has about one fifh that and if I stuck to it, I could easily be done by xmas.

I think your problem really might be the same one I have: an attempt to make every miniature perfect, which at 6mm and smaller is a pain in the ass. You need tomdiscipline yourself to do as much of an impressionistic style as you can stand.

We get slapped around, but we have a good time!

[Angel Barracks]

Thaddeus Blanchette wrote:

You need tomdiscipline yourself to do as much of an impressionistic style as you can stand.

Alas this is pretty much zero, hence my new love of skirmish!
Where an hour a figure is not a chore if you only have a few figures to do!

😀

[Lagartija Mike]

My day to day is well removed from hobby culture so my opportunities to play against other opponents are rare. The upshot is there’s almost no incentive to complete a project once I’ve done a few units and I’m itching for something new (or want to redo or “improve” the figures I’ve already done). At this very moment I’m trying to restrain myself from ordering Cossacks and Opolochenie in quantities I’m unlikely to complete and even less likely to use in play.

@AB: An hour a figure! Between time pressures and my compulsion to mod it’s rare for me to finish more than a figure every day or so.

[John D Salt]

I am disappointed now. I was hoping for a discussion of the relative merits of different kinds of Combat Body Armour.

All the best,

John.

[Lagartija Mike]

Then you need my forthcoming rules, John. Almost fifty types of armor meticulously graded against weapon types in a coma-inducing detonation of 1000kt granularity. I’m going to sell the rules by the pound.

[John D Salt]

Lagartija Mike wrote:

Almost fifty types of armor meticulously graded against weapon types in a coma-inducing detonation of 1000kt granularity.

I didn’t think granularity came in tonnes.

{Wibbly visual effects indicate that we are experiencing a flashback}

Many years ago, when I was working on Battlespace Situational Awareness Tools before there were any Battlespace Situational Awareness Tools, at a now-defunct research establishment whose identity I shall conceal behind the impenetrable pseudonym Fort Hatstand, I tried to introduce a standard unit of granularity. The idea was to use it to identify the smallest amount of detail a battlespace picture would contain — platoon, company, battalion, what do you want, sir? This would have had the benefit of avoiding confusion between “company a counter” and “a company on the table” for wargamers, too. However the term “granularity” was not as popular then as now (other than to describe things made of grains), so I conceived this as a measure of aggregation (from the Latin grex, gregis, a flock — not to be confused with flocculation, which is more about fluffiness). Such a unit could not be derived from the SI base units, but, modelling my proposed unit’s name on the tradition of the “calorie” for heat and the “caudalie” for a wine’s length, I proposed it be called the “gregorie”. 0 gregories referred to individuals, 1 gregorie to fireteam/vehicle crew, 2 gregories to section, 3 to platoon, and so on.

{/Wibbly}

My erstwhile employers didn’t go for the idea, though. Harrumph.

All the best,

John.

[Not Connard Sage]

Lagartija Mike wrote:

Then you need my forthcoming rules, John. Almost fifty types of armor meticulously graded against weapon types in a coma-inducing detonation of 1000kt granularity. I’m going to sell the rules by the pound.

 

I’ve already got a copy of Challenger 2000 thankyewvermuch

Obvious contrarian and passive aggressive old prat, who is taken far too seriously by some and not seriously enough by others.

[Rules Junkie Jim]

I’ve never given up on a project, but I’ve quite a few that are, like Fugazi, on indefinite hiatus.

[Otto Schmidt]

Dear List

 

The problem may be a collision of megalomania and disappointment. This idea of doing waterloo on a one to one leads you guys to go for these tiny mm (less than 15mm) armies to get the numbers, but the results of no matter how much work you put into it must be disappointing as you can’t see that much. Sorry, not trying to be insulting, but you can plan to make as grandiose a plan as you wish but if you wind up with something that looks like mottled textured wallboard at the end of it, what’s the point?  It’s why I never left 25-30mm. Yeah, I don’t get to do all of Tannenberg (doesn’t matter if it’s WWI or the Middle Ages) but what I got looks nice.

I  never do skirmish gaming either. Lots of figures on the table. As I said in other posts, slow, patient effort.

 

Otto

 

[Angel Barracks]

Otto Schmidt wrote:

but the results of no matter how much work you put into it must be disappointing as you can’t see that much. Sorry, not trying to be insulting, but you can plan to make as grandiose a plan as you wish but if you wind up with something that looks like mottled textured wallboard at the end of it, what’s the point?

Try looking harder then? plenty of detail on this 6mm fella.

I will admit the lighting is not great so it is hard to make out all the details, but there are buttons down the sides of his trousers.
Shading and highlighting too, but again poor camera work, not poor painting, or poor models.

The detail is there, and what I got looks nice to me.

 

🙂

 

[Thaddeus Blanchette]

Not only can you get a lot of detail on the microscales, if the paintjob is done right, you definitely don’t get a textured wallboard effect.

That’s great stuff, AB! But that’s why you can’t do 2000 of them.

We get slapped around, but we have a good time!

[Angel Barracks]

Thanks!

 

Ah but I did, I gave up after about 2000.

The thought of being only part way there was  too much for me.

[Guy Farrish]

I started off with 25mm (long time ago!) French Napoleonics.

I’d collected and painted about 300 foot and 100 cavalry and 6 guns and suddenly realised that at the scale  of figs to real men I was using and the size of battle I wanted to fight and the time it took me to paint a unit, I would be about ready…well now! But then I realised that even if I did, I’d be most unlikely ever to have the size of table available to play the battles I wanted – so I abandoned (and eventually sold) all the 25mm and started on 6mm with a set of rules and resolution that allowed me to play ‘proper’ games based on ‘proper’ Napoleonic battle sizes. So a few thousand figures later (and definitely more at the wallboard end of painting than Michael’s) I am a happy gamer (with plans for more 6mm figures and armies in the Napoleonic period.)

The point of this gratuitous rambling?

Michael you should have stayed with 6mm Napoleonics and gone for c30 figs per brigade. Waterloo on a 6’x4′ with room to spare for the Prussians or Grouchy to arrive!

 

As for other realisations I am never going to be bothered finishing a project/period/scenario – too many to mention! Lots of sales as a result – and no regrets either. I still have Italian Wars figures from c1977 however that have only started fighting in the last 10 years; so laying down a few figs isn’t always a disaster either.

[Sane Max]

I see a pattern here, I have started loads of projects in scales smaller than 15mm and always gone ‘Bugger that’ after painting half an army. 6mm and 10mm just don’t fire me enough to give me that urge to keep plugging away.

[Lagartija Mike]

Sometimes projects spontaneously abort due to issues unrelated to willpower or time. I’m in a fit of high epicene pique because for me to do my Phosgene & Sol d’Or Interwar project I’d need (at least) the full armor/armored car ranges from Minairons and Copplestone and the scales, naturally, don’t match.

[DM]

Just about any project of mine at the moment

[Thaddeus Blanchette]

Yeah, bathtubbing Napoleonics is the way to go if you want to use battalions as your manuever forces. Otherwise, do brigades and Blucher.

With microscales, I can have Blucher armies (in 3mm) and Black Powder armies (in 6mm) and both projects will take me about two years total of leisurely painting.

For this set up, I am going to do it so I have a corps, plus supporting troops, but also in a way that allows them to break down into bathtubbed unit where a brigade = a corps.

So I’m going to have four “brigades” each with four or five infantry units, a light cavalry unit and an artillery unit. There will also be a Guard “brigade” with two Old Guard infantry, two young guard infantry and two heavy artillery, plus a Guard cavalry brigade of two cavalry units and a horse artillery battery. Finally, there will be a cavalry reserve with two Cuirassiers, two Dragoons and a horse artillery battery.

That’s the bathtub force.

It can also be broken down as a “Historical” corps of six regiments, a combined grenadier force, a combined voltiguer force, a light cavalry division and three artillery batteries, with a heavy cavalry division and horse artillery battery in support.

We get slapped around, but we have a good time!

[Lagartija Mike]

As much as I’m often impressed by the mass effect possible with the smaller scales, so much is lost with periods like the Napoleonic where the pleasure is in the opulence of detail. I was considering putting together a 6mm 1-to-1 ratio Ii Red Devils of the Tokugawa Bakufu against a mixed force of tozama daimyo but I came to the conclusion it would end up looking like an unnaturally static red smear against a largely steel and earth tones opposing smear. I love the numbers involved but it doesn’t seem to translate into the visuals I want to realize.

[Thaddeus Blanchette]

With the microscales, you need to think in terms of a different visual reference: it is the entire scene which becomes important: terrain as much as figures. And you need to exagerate the painting and colors. So it would only be a red smear if you didn’t do that. You should exagerate the yellow horns, the kanji on the back banners, etc.

Microscales also lend themselves to two sorts of games: huge set-ups with sweeping vistas, or small, painstakingly constructed microgames that can be played on a coffee table.

We get slapped around, but we have a good time!

[Lagartija Mike]

Right now one thing I’m not lacking is space, so even (very) large scale battles would be possible (assuming I ever get off my xanax and tryptophan groundsloth ass). I need to take some fearsome United Satanic Apache blöd oath and just approach it like a rabid mo-sheeeeeen!

I agree about the power of terrain and scenery. Another good question is whether or not to go with 15mm terrain with 28mm figures. It varies from the looking like something seen in a fugue state to powerfully realistic.

[Thaddeus Blanchette]

I am a big fan of going one scale smaller on the terrain. I think it pretty much always works out because it foregrounds the figures.

We get slapped around, but we have a good time!

[paintpig]

Always have found this approach infinitely  for large figure ratios. For example for 28/25mm where one figure might equal anything from ten to sixty combatants (or civilians what have you) I personally would use 20mm buildings. For the most part it doesn’t affect the feel or look of the table top, even where a figure is adjacent to a doorway it doesn’t automatically out of place, looks a bit odd in a photo but that is to be expected when capturing/studying the moment. We are big fans of the relatively cheap card buildings in this case and down (or up) scaling is a simple exercise before printing.

In games where one figure represents one combatant then the scale for buildings and figures is best visually, naturally, and I can use my resin and scratch built.

I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel
Slowly Over A Low Flame

[paintpig]

Angel Barracks wrote:

Have you ever just gotten so fed up with a project that you jacked it in? 

Let me count the times, I just need to slip off my shoes!

I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel
Slowly Over A Low Flame

[Northern Monkey]

I am quite strict with my new purchases these days which has led to me actually getting projects finished, compared to a few years back when my lead mountain was in surmountable, I find having an annual purge of stuff that is unlikely to ever get painted or used helps focus my painting/gaming. Before I started doing this I must have written off 10 or so projects that I had collected stuff for but couldn’t bring myself to actually paint, mainly due to my bad habit of wanting to have examples of all possible units for each army.

My attempt at a Blog: http://ablogofwar.blogspot.co.uk/

[Author]

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